On Point

CEO activism has officially arrived

CEO activism has been an increasingly important issue for Fortune readers, and an important conversation within our executive communities, such as the CEO Initiative. This piece makes a strong case that executives are officially feeling free to speak out on the hot-button issues – like race, gun control and LGBTQ rights – that align with their personal values and those of the organizations they lead. In fact, this HBR piece was tweeted by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff (who is one of the examples they cite) just to drive the point home. “CEO activism is not a leadership choice, but a modern — and an evolving — expectation,” he said.

On the eve of tomorrow’s historic march on Washington, Vanity Fair takes us deep inside the media lab created by the survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High shooting and their friends. Their plan? To meme and message #NeverAgain into genuine action and policy change. They’re organized, collaborative, non-hierarchical and research-based; they work iteratively, are open to feedback, and execute as efficiently as any corporate team. Best of all, they are uniquely intersectional in their thinking. If you file this story under “future of work” instead of political activism, the story becomes even more important. The kids are alright, and not just the wealthy ones.

More than half of all transgender teachers report some form of discrimination in the workplace

Here’s a depressing dispatch from the education team at NPR. Their recent survey of 79 transgender or gender-nonconforming teachers in the US and Canada found that 56 percent reported some form of workplace discrimination or harassment, almost always from colleagues or administrators, not students. Most of the teachers surveyed had also tried to integrate LGBTQ topics into their teaching or advise awareness groups, primarily for the safety of students. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a supportive parent for my LGBT kids,” said one NYC high school teacher.

The comedian-turned-producer continues to cement his status as a legitimate media mogul while maintaining his unique sense of humor. His latest acquisition of the Weather Group was completed during the most recent nor’easter, which blanketed the East Coast with snow. The deal does not include the Weather Group’s digital assets, like weather.com or related apps. Entertainment Studios owns eight other cable networks, including JusticeCentral.tv, Cars.tv, Pets.tv and Recipe.tv.

The Woke Leader

Age bias at IBM and beyond

ProPublica and Mother Jones collaborated on this story exploring how IBM has been scrambling to meet the challenges of a rapidly transforming technology sector since the 1980s by correcting its “seniority mix,” eliminating older employess in ways that may circumvent age discrimination laws. In the past five years alone, the investigative team estimates that 60% of the jobs eliminated by the company have been held by employees 40 or over. Fortune’s Jonathan Vanian tackled this issue last year, finding that some 60,000 tech jobs had been eliminated by blue-chip firms like Cisco, and for similar reasons. The cost is something we need to think about, he says. “There’s a human element that often gets overlooked when companies try to stay up to date with current technological trends.”

Wendy Chin-Tanner, worried about the uptick in hate crimes and rhetoric, has written a lengthy essay that might come in handy when faced with a friend, neighbor or loved one who is on the other side of an important divide. Find a way to honor your own point of view without demonizing others. “What I propose is a two-step plan for radical empathy where step one is self-empathy and step two is strategic empathy,” she writes. “We can use strategic empathy to help us maintain our own points of view while understanding the context and reasoning of someone else’s even if we don’t agree with them, even if we’re angry at them, and even if we can’t find it within ourselves to love them.”

Rumi’s love poetry has been a revelation for seekers of universal wisdom around the world for centuries. But the New Yorker’s Rozina Ali argues that his popularity, particularly within high tone circles – Madonna, Tilda Swinton and Coldplay’s Chris Martin have long been among his celebrity fans – have allowed publishers to erase Rumi’s Muslim essence from his work to our detriment. But don’t blame rock and roll. “It was in the Victorian period that readers in the West began to uncouple mystical poetry from its Islamic roots.” It was Rumi’s unique experience at the intersection of Sufism, Sunni Islam and Koranic debate that informed his voice, and animated his desire for oneness with God. But a committed contempt for Islam persuaded scholars over the years that Rumi was “mystical not because of Islam but in spite of it.”